Tahiti Le Meridien

Le Meridien in Tahiti was our home-away-from-home for close to 2 weeks. We grew quite fond of the attentive staff, the peaceful location, glamorous setting, & the gorgeous surroundings. This was our first sight after landing from our 24 hour flight ... at 07:00 we drove up the driveway into the lobby building which is built in traditional French Polynesian style. What a breathtaking sight after the confined spaces of an aircraft.
This was the view from our first room - after our 3 day trip to Bora Bora, we stayed in the other wing. It was lovely to enjoy a glass of wine with tapas while sitting on our balcony during the sunset. An extra touch was the pond built above the surrounding roof, filled with Japanese fish. These are the famous overwater bungalows. To be honest, we preferred our Lagoon bungalow in Bora Bora as it was quite private & peaceful. This beach offered the most AMAZING snorkelling click here to see photos of the underwater life that was all around the bungalows.
The property had many of these statues that are typical of the Polynesian culture. We also discovered fresh fruit along the path from our room to the pool. We found fresh mangos, bananas & coconut regularly. One day, Arnie was talking with a nice man who was doing some gardening and he cut him a fresh coconut from the tree - delicious.Above is the hotel beach - the only white sand beach on all of Tahiti. I was told that the sand was brought in from Moorea.

The pool was AMAZING - largest pool is all of French Polynesia & was filled, as well as surrounded, by soft white sand - quite a unique idea. Actually, the pool is considered one of the most prestigious pools with the local French population & with local photographers. During our stay, we saw 3 or 4 photo shoots taking place, on the edge of the sandy pool during sunset, with beautiful Polynesian models.This was my favourite place - read books, listened to music, daydreamed in the sun, watched the wild dogs playing on the beach & just relaxed enjoying the atmosphere on my hammock ... almost everyday. I spent a few mornings alone here when Arnie went diving - click here to see his diving photos.

While daydreaming, I would look up in the sky and smile ... above is precisely my view when I looked straight up. These hammocks were perfectly positioned so that I was nicely in the shadow of these giant palm trees during the hottest time of the day.This picture might look familiar - it was the one we used for our Xmas cards in 2006. You know the one ... where we were sitting on this hammock in the middle of the snow (hee hee - the snow was a scene from our visit to Switzerland during Xmas 2004).

Here I am ... in 1 of my new pareos - coming back from the beach to my special place :-)During the hottest time from the day, I would live in the pool to keep cool.

Gotta eat ... here we are enjoying a luxurious lunch in Le Carre - we did not do this every day but wish we had because the food was truly scrumptious. This picture might have been the result of too much rose wine ... ha ha ha

I am truly grateful that we only discovered these tasty cocktails on our second last day ... otherwise we would have had a HUGE bar bill from multiple orders. They were absolutely DIVINE. Cannot remember what was in them (unusual for me as I remember what is in every drink on the planet) but I distinctly remember our eyes lighting up with satisfaction as we tried our first sip.

I simply could not resist this photo - every day ... ALL day long, the local wild dogs would run & run & run along the beach, in the water. They would playfully chase each other for hours & hours at a time. It was so entertaining to watch them. They were friendly & did not cause any trouble - just want to cool down like us.

Last photo of this post & for the night. Just imagine ... you are in the middle of the Pacific Ocean on a tiny island that is quite isolated, such as with Tahiti. Because we were so far away in such a remote location, the nighttime stars were simply dazzling - what a spectacular display!